The efficient cleaning of clothes requires that the cleaning agents, such as soap or detergent, commonly in a liquid mixture, be brought into contact with all areas of the garments in order to break the soil fiber bond. Cleaning also requires that some scrubbing or mechanical working of the garments occur in order to open up the weave and to mechanically rub or knock off the soil. It is further desirable that the washing action maintain liquid circulation and turbulence throughout all liquid-containing regions in order to mix the cleaning agents into the liquid and maintain a homogeneous mixture of the cleaning agents throughout the liquid.
The conventional, modern clothes washing machine has a central agitator which pivotally reciprocates about a vertical axis to accomplish mechanical working of the clothing and stirring of the cleaning liquid. However, agitator-type washing machines suffer from some disadvantages. Their vanes rub the clothing relatively harshly as a result of the rapid, periodic reversing of direction of the agitator. Also, cleaning compounds tend to collect in relatively high concentration in the region below the inner perforate drum and above the bottom of the outer, impervious container because there is relatively little turbulence in this relatively calm region and little circulation between this lower region and the main cleaning volume in the perforate drum.
Prior to the predominance of the modern agitator-type washing machines, front loading washing machines which rotated about a horizontal axis, were popular. These horizontal axis machines accomplished the mechanical working and scrubbing of the clothing by a tumbling action in which the garments are repetitively lifted by a combination of centrifugal force and vanes, which extend inwardly from the interior surface of the inner drum walls, and then dropped back into the cleaning liquid. Mechanical action of this type is more gentle and accomplishes more uniform cleaning because this repetitive lifting, rotating, and dropping of the garments tends to continuously move the clothing into various configurations as the operation progresses, rather than simply rolling the clothing and abrading the exterior of the roll.
The front loading machines, however, are relatively complicated because their rotating drum is cantilever supported at the back of the machine. In addition, the use of a front door requires a liquid seal which can easily leak upon deterioration of its gasket. For these reasons and the fact that the door cannot be opened to add additional clothing once the front loader is filled with liquid, the manufacture of such machines in the United States has essentially been discontinued. However, because of the more severe water shortage in Europe, front and top loading machines which rotate about a horizontal axis are common.
One advantage of horizontally rotating machines is that they inherently require less liquid and therefore additionally inherently require less soap. The reason is that horizontally rotating washing machines do not require full immersion of the entirety of the batch of clothing as is required by agitator machines because the horizontal rotating machine relies upon picking the clothes up from the liquid and dropping them back, rather than full immersion and toroidal circulation as in the agitator machines. Since the horizontal machines utilize considerably less water, they also require considerably less detergent to obtain the same detergent concentration.
It is an object and purpose of the present invention to obtain the advantages of a top loading machine, which rotates about a horizontal axis, while simultaneously further improving both the liquid and soap consumption efficiency and the cleaning effectiveness. This is accomplished in the present invention by creating additional fluid flow action within the cleaning liquid, which in turn produces additional mechanical working of the clothing and improved stirring and mixing of the cleaning liquid and any softening agents being used.